Disclaimer and limitations of liability

The Embassy of the Russian Federation in Australia and the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Sydney have concluded an agreement with Interlink Service LLC for provision of services for accepting and processing of applications for visas to Russian Federation from citizens of Australia and other countries wishing to visit Russian Federation, and issuing the processed documents.

Interlink Service LLC has appointed an Australian company Interlink Service Pty Ltd as a provider of these services in Australia.

Accordingly, Russian visa centers in Australia are specific-purpose offices for the acceptance and processing of applications for visas to Russian Federation, and the issuance of processed documents provided by Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd on behalf of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Australia and the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Sydney.

Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd provides services and is only responsible for the following functions:

  • accepting the applicant's passport, completed visa application, supporting documents (hereinafter – the "Documents") and the relevant consular and service fees;
  • submitting documents to the authorized Russian diplomatic mission on behalf of the applicant;
  • after the diplomatic mission has considered the Documents, obtaining the applicant's passport and other Documents from the diplomatic mission and returning the Documents to the applicant or his/her representative or sending them on the applicant's behalf by mail or courier to the address indicated by the applicant. In certain cases, despite the procedure described above, the diplomatic mission may transfer the relevant Documents directly to the applicant, bypassing the visa center.

Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd informs applicants about the following:

  1. Payment of the visa fee by the applicant does not automatically entail the acquisition of the right to obtain a visa. The decision on the visa or refusal of visa is at the sole discretion of the diplomatic missions of Russian Federation.
  2. Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd and its employees have no influence or control over the process, timing and outcome of a visa application.
  3. The period of consideration of the visa application by Russian diplomatic mission is from 4 to 12 working days. In some cases the period may be extended up to 30 days. During this period, the applicant's passport will be in the relevant Russian diplomatic mission.
  4. Russian diplomatic missions reserve the right to request any additional Documents from the applicant, to invite the applicant for an interview, and to refuse to issue a visa.
  5. Incorrect filling or falsification of visa Documents, as well as the provision of an incomplete set of Documents may result in the refusal of the diplomatic mission to issue a visa.
  6. Regardless of the outcome of the visa application, and in case of refusal/withdrawal of the application by the applicant, the consular and service fees received by Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd from the applicant or his representatives are not refundable.
  7. Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd shall not be liable to the applicant for the loss of the applicant's documents, which occurred as a result of an accident, unlawful acts of third parties, natural disasters (force majeure), as well as any other reasons that Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd could not foresee and/or control.

Privacy policy

Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd

1. About Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd

Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd ("Interlink", “us”, “we”) is an Australian company, ACN 630 546 191. Interlink has entered into a contract with the Russian Embassy in Australia and the Russian Consulate General in Sydney for executing visa handling services in Australia on behalf of the above diplomatic missions.

In addition to acceptance and handing over of documents, we also help you complete the application forms, receive and return your documents by post or courier service, check your documents online, collect documents from your location, book taxi service, concierge-service, interpreter service etc., provided by us or our selected partners via our website or in the office. The use of additional services is not mandatory and is at your discretion.

When you apply for a visa and/or order additional services, we collect, use and process your personal data in order to provide you with the services.

2. Application of the Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy applies to our collection, use and processing of your personal data. We collect, use and process your personal information when you use our service as our customer or potential customer. This includes instances when you order our services in our offices, use our website, call center, send us postal application or an email communication.

3. Processing of personal data

3.1 Booking an appointment

When you book an appointment on our website, you will be asked to provide your name and email address. When you change your booking or otherwise seek other support from us, we will process the above-mentioned personal information we have collected from you.

This information will not be disclosed to third parties. However, to fulfill our legal obligations, we may disclose your data to the police or other state authorities.

The information you have provided for booking an appointment and appointment management will be stored until the appointment date and will be deleted at the end of the day of appointment.

3.2 Submission, online document checkup, postal application, courier delivery and other additional services

When you submit documents in our office and/or order additional services (the service of online document checkup, apply for a visa by post, order SMS-informing, courier delivery or other additional services) you will provide us with your personal information: your name, surname, passport number, date of issue and expiry, your photo and contact information such as postal address, email, telephone number.

The data provided by you will be used by us to perform the duties in accordance with the services you have ordered: accept and process documents for visa, inform you about the results of online or manual checkup of your documents, return your documents to you, inform you whether your passport is ready for handing over, provide you with other additional services. This includes sending you information regarding your application, postal or courier delivery or other additional services, by email, SMS (if ordered) or telephone. Postal return, SMS-informing and other additional services involve services provided by third parties, and we will disclose your name and contact details, where necessary, to that third party. The purpose of these processing activities is to provide you with the services you have ordered from us.

If payment is made online, you will additionally have to provide your payment details (e.g. credit card number and expiry date), in addition to other personal data, to complete your payment. These data, in particular, your name, address, email address and IP address will be disclosed to our payment service providers, for the purpose of receiving your payment and completing your order.

The information you have provided for the purposes of submission of documents, ordering online document checkup, postal application, courier delivery and/or other additional services will be stored for the purpose of service quality control up to one month from the date of completion of the service. This information may be disclosed to fulfill our legal obligations to the police or other state authorities.

3.3 Contact center and customer support

Interlink may use various forms of customer support in order to help you. For us to be able to provide you with customer support, we will process your personal data to identify you and help you as best we can. You can contact us by phone, via email or post, and when you communicate with us via any of these means, we will help you with your inquiries, questions or feedback concerning our services.

After you have contacted contact center or customer support, we may examine the content of our communication with you, for instance, the recording of our communication with you when we deal with your complaint. This is to control the quality of the service we have provided to you. For this purpose, your personal data such as your name, contact detail may be processed.

The information you have provided for the purposes of customer support will be stored for the purpose of service quality control up to one month from the date of your inquiry.

We may transfer the functions of the contact center and customer support to a third-party organization. In this case, your data will be processed by this third party. To fulfill our legal obligations, we may also be required to disclose your personal data to the police or other state authorities.

4. Disclosure of your personal data

We do not use your personal data for marketing purposes and do not share it with other companies for such purposes. We may only share your personal data as follows:

- When additional services ordered by you involve service provided by a third party, we may share your personal data with these third parties;
- With our third-party service providers, who perform operations or work on our behalf and on our instructions as data processors, for the purposes indicated in this Privacy Policy; or
- To public authorities or governments when required by law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.

If you do not wish to provide us with your personal information, we will not be able to provide you with our services.

5. Your rights

You have the right to request access, rectification, restriction and deletion of your personal data held by us, and to receive a copy of your personal data in a structured machine-readable format. Inquiries regarding processing of personal data and access request shall be directed to the point of contact provided below.

You also have rights to object to some processing. Where we process your data because we have a legitimate interest in doing so (as explained above), you also have a right to object to this. These rights may be limited in some situations – for example, where we can demonstrate that we have a legal requirement to process your data.

We only need your personal data to comply with the requirements of the law or to enter into and execute a contract with you. Therefore, the provision of such data is mandatory. If such data is not provided to us, we will not be able to enter into a contract with you and fulfill our contractual obligations.

6. Transfer of personal data to other countries

In the above cases we may transfer your personal data to third parties (domestic and/or overseas) for the purposes of providing you with the services you have requested. Transfer of personal data to a third country outside Australia that does not provide adequate protection will only take place if appropriate safeguards are provided, e.g., by Binding Corporate Rules, entering into EU Standard Contractual Clauses or if the receiving party is certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield.

7. Changes and amendments to this policy

Our website will always contain the current version of the Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy may be changed or updated without prior notice to you.

If you do not agree to the current version or any of the modified or amended terms of the Privacy Policy, you must discontinue the use of our service.

8. Jurisdiction and applicable law

This Privacy Policy shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Australia and be subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Australia.

9. How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions or comments about our privacy practices or this Privacy Policy. You can reach us online at data.protection@interlinkservice.ru. You can reach us via mail directed to:

Interlink Service Australia Pty Ltd
Shop 2/ 209 Harris St, Pyrmont 2009 NSW

If you have unresolved concerns you also have the right to complain to data protection authorities. The relevant data protection authority will be the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Effective date: March 18, 2019 / Last updated: March 18, 2019